NEW MEXICO TO BUILD SPACEPORT FOR ROCKET LAUNCHES.Byline: Staff and Wire Services SANTA FE Santa Fe, city, Argentina Santa Fe, city (1991 pop. 341,000), capital of Santa Fe prov., NE Argentina, a river port near the Paraná, with which it is connected by canal. , N.M. - British airline tycoon Airline Tycoon is an economic simulation game, in which you must successfully manage an airline. The original was developed by Spellbound, and published by Infogrames, however, the succeeding versions were published by a variety of publishers. Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950 in Shamley Green, Surrey, England), is a British entrepreneur, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 is expected to announce next week that his space-tourism company will launch passenger-carrying rocket planes out of New Mexico. Branson is to join Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday to announce the agreement with Branson's space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans said. ``This has been a dream of New Mexico for the past 15 years to develop a spaceport space·port n. An installation for sheltering, testing, maintaining, and launching spacecraft. , and it also coincides with Richard Branson's dream to take people back and forth into space,'' he said. ``I think this is one of those great occurrences for New Mexico where we're in the right place at the right time, and we're on the verge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of witnessing a whole new industry develop right in front of us.'' State officials have visited Virgin Galactic in London and company officials have made repeated visits to New Mexico, Homans said. Last year, SpaceShipOne, designed by Mojave aircraft builder Burt Rutan and funded by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, made the first space flight of a privately developed manned rocket. The rocket plane captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize The Ansari X PRIZE was a space competition in which the X PRIZE Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. with two suborbital suborbital /sub·or·bi·tal/ (sub-or´bi-t'l) infraorbital. sub·or·bit·al adj. Situated on or below the floor of the orbit of the eye. n. flights in five days from Mojave Airport, where the craft was built. The prize was aimed at encouraging space tourism through the development of low-cost private spacecraft. Rutan has a deal with Branson, chairman of the Virgin Group, to build five spacecraft. Virgin Galactic is to take passengers on trips into space for $200,000 each. Some 33,000 people have applied for applications for reservations on the ships Rutan is building. Would-be passengers have paid about $10 million in deposits, a Virgin Galactic official said last week. Virgin Galactic officials have said they plan to fly its spaceships out of the Mojave Airport at first, but want a home of their own. Vice President Alex Tai said at a Los Angeles conference that California officials needed to ``step up and be a little more proactive.'' New Mexico plans to break ground in January on a spaceport near Upham, off Interstate 25 north of Las Cruces. Two private companies, Starchaser and UP Aerospace, have announced plans to launch such things as science experiments from the spaceport. State officials, trying to attract private space business, have touted the planned spaceport's high altitude, good weather and proximity to White Sands Missile Range White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), formerly known as the White Sands Proving Grounds, is a rocket range in New Mexico operated by the United States Army. The range covers an area of almost 3,200 mi² (8 287 km²), approximately three times the size of Rhode Island, making it . |
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